Tom
Selleck has had one of the more intriguing what if film careers. If he had been
able to get out of his contract for the television show Magnum, P.I. and done Raiders
of the Lost Ark (1981) who knows how his career would’ve turned out?
Instead, he ended up doing a string of entertaining but mostly forgettable fare
such as High Road to China (1983), Lassiter (1984), and Runaway (1984) that all underperformed
at the box office to one degree or another as people were by and large content
to watch him every week on T.V. It wasn’t until the smash hit of Three Men and a Baby (1990) that he had
a significant financial success. Of all the movies he did in the early to
mid-1980s, Lassiter is the most
interesting effort.
Set in
1939 London, Selleck plays a high-end jewel thief by the name of Nick Lassiter.
The movie begins with the man plying his trade, expertly breaking into a luxurious
mansion and stealing expensive jewelry. He almost gets away with it until the
lady of the house catches him on the way out. Instead of calling out to her
husband, whom she has been bickering with since they arrived home, she lets
Lassiter go but not before he helps her get undressed for her bath and the
surprising female nudity signals that this won’t be family-friendly PG fare but
naughty R-rated fun.
When he’s
not robing the rich, he’s hobnobbing with them at a swanky nightclub with his
beautiful wife Sarah (Jane Seymour) where they exchange unfortunately bland
repartee, which is a damn shame as Selleck and Jane Seymour have lovely chemistry
together. The next day, Lassiter is picked up by Inspector Becker (Bob Hoskins)
and framed for a crime he didn’t commit but is given a chance to go free if he
works with FBI agent Peter Breeze (Joe Regalbuto), helping steal $10 million
worth of unset diamonds from the German embassy, slowing down their espionage
efforts in South America.
To do so,
Lassiter must get close to the courier, Kari Von Fursten (Lauren Hutton) and
her Gestapo bodyguard Max Hofer (Warren Clarke). Breeze describes her as
“pretty wild” and we quickly get an idea of just how wild when we see her kill
one of her sexual conquests while they’re in bed together, evidently a perverse
turn-on for her. Lauren Hutton looks like she’s having fun playing a woman with
“unusual appetites,” as one character puts it, and she goes on to describe
Shanghai as interesting for its diversions such as “women with animals, drugs,
little boys, pleasure and pain.” She certainly looks the part of an elegant
Nazi with some weird kinks.
Tom
Selleck does an excellent job playing a suave jewel thief who is comfortable
bantering playfully with a Nazi femme fatale in posh casinos as he is watching
down ‘n’ dirty underground boxing matches. He’s also not afraid to get his
hands dirty as evident in a scene where he and Max have it out in a bloody
brawl at Lassiter’s apartment. This role allows Selleck to show off his leading
man chops, demonstrating his capacity for romance with Seymour, action, his
athletic prowess with the cat burglar sequence, and even a light comic touch in
an amusing scene where he communicates with a Nazi guard only through facial
expressions and gestures while wearing a frilly woman’s housecoat, trying not
to wake Kari sleeping in the next room.
Jane Seymour is well cast as Selleck’s foil. Sarah enjoys their lifestyle but is not crazy about his current gig and doesn’t understand why they can’t just take off to Rome or parts elsewhere. He tells her, “Someone else dealt the cards, Sarah. I’m just playing them out,” to which she replies, “Well, you’re holding a losing hand now, Nick.” She is a strong-willed person that loves her husband but won’t have her life sent in a direction she doesn’t like and Seymour does a fine job conveying her character’s strength.
The always reliable Ed Lauter is cast refreshingly against type as Smoke, a prolific car thief and Lassiter’s best friend. Known mostly for playing cops and authority figures, he must’ve jumped at the opportunity to sink his teeth into a character on the opposite side of the law. He has an excellent scene with Selleck where Smoke and Lassiter reminisce about the good ol’ days when they bootlegged liquor during Prohibition.
